keep dogs on t’ place?”
“No.”
The man studied him a moment. In the shadow of the hat Stephen made out small ice-blue eyes, seemingly set far back in the skull. The man then sniffed, and his entire body seemed to relax. The shotgun slumped to his side. “Aye, right.” He ventured a half-hearted grin. “Cos you know what we do to dogs as get where they’ve no business being?”
Stephen didn’t, but could guess. The man laughed, a dry snicker that came, apparently, from somewhere near his breastbone. “Fair enough. I’ll sithee, lad.”
And with that he was gone, striding off, stiff-legged, across the rutted landscape. Stephen watched until the man merged with the horizon, savouring the experience. For the first time in half a decade he had met and spoken with a stranger. Blood pumped through his brain. His breath caught with excitement. He wanted to tell someone, to boast of the adventure. Out of the question, of course. He knew what his mother’s reaction would be.
---What do you mean? Olivia demanded, almost hysterical. You couldn’t find any?
---I went as far as I dared. There aren’t any. All the bushes have been stripped. Perhaps a dog got at them.
That sly afterthought was absolutely as far as he dared go. He expected his mother to sneer: Dogs don’t eat blackberries! Instead, she backed down. ---Oh well, you did your best, I suppose. Stephen couldn’t believe his ears. The encounter with the stranger and now this, his mother being reasonable. What a day!
That day led to other days. His father’s lack of wellness continued to the extent that Stephen gave up asking and just assumed. He supposed he should go upstairs and visit the invalid. And he would, sometime, he supposed. In the meantime all the tasks of working the farm fell to him, the senior male.
---I could get the twins to help, his mother suggested limply. Richard’s got bags of energy and I expect Amelia could...
---That’s all right, Stephen assured her. I’ll ask for help when I need it.
He didn’t need help because he didn’t do enough work to warrant any. Just the bare minimum needed to keep his mother from coming out to check on him. He collected eggs, picked fruit, dug up vegetables for the pot. And nothing else. He knew there was compost to turn, trees to prune, tools to clean and sharpen – all the routine maintenance needed to keep self-sufficiency going. But his dad could do that when he got back on his feet. It wouldn’t be long now, Stephen thought. His mum would soon tire of waiting on the invalid. In the meantime Stephen made the most of his unexpected freedom, dashing up the slope as soon and as often as he could.
It wasn’t so bad, this Yorkshire, he decided. Once you clambered out of the hole in the ground where Olivia and Finn had buried their family. Quite nice in many ways, even pretty. He liked the way the huge fields just rolled away on all sides like the undulations of his duvet after a peaceful night’s sleep. Here and there were indentations – holes with steep sides and flat bottoms, just like the Websters’ hole, only smaller and deeper. And every now and then the flatness was broken by a stand of trees, some with thick, twisted trunks, crouching defensively, others tall and straight and slim. Stephen could not decide which trees he liked best. Then he realised that the black stunted ones reminded him of Richard, the tall silver-barked ones of Amelia. Then there was no question which he preferred. Underneath and around the trees were dense tangles of undergrowth, in bristling contrast to the smooth neatness of the fields. Stephen poked around and found insects and fungi and one day a bird’s nest with a single chick in it. It looked tiny and wretched and put up a terrible screeching racket when he pulled the thatch away. Stephen panicked. Never mind the chick’s mother, what if his mother heard and came to investigate? Instinctively he grabbed its head, covering it entirely with his hand. Still it squawked. He squeezed, twisted, until the tiny head came off in his fist. He didn’t visit that copse again. It didn’t seem right. He decided he would chop it down if he ever got the chance. Or burn it.
The thing about Yorkshire, this part of it at least, that fascinated him was how empty it was. London, in his memory, was stuffed end and side with humanity. You often had to weave to make headway through the throng. At other times the human tide swept you along. But here on the wold it was as if he was the only sentient being. Stephen found the idea incredibly exciting. This is my world. I can do anything I want. He knew it wasn’t true, of course. There was the lanky scarecrow with the shotgun, doubtless others. He was in two minds about the possibility of encountering the sniffing stranger again. But when the moment came, on the fifth day---
“Ow!”
“Ow!” Stephen called back. And as the man drew closer: “Any news about the dog?”
“T’ent a dog,” the man said. “I reckon it’s a pig.”
“A pig?” Stephen didn’t like to point out that surely any fool could tell a dog from a pig. Then the man said, “Aye. Run wild.” And that caught Stephen’s attention. He recalled pictures in books, a large pink piggybank. “Does that happen?”
“More than you’d think, lad, aye.” The man squatted down. Stephen felt obliged to do the same. Closer to the ground, the man lowered his voice, spoke confidentially. “They reckon any pig’s only a couple o’ generation away from a proper wild boar. Left to their own devices, they reckon a pig on the roam soon reverts. Some reckon their teeth grow into proper tusks. I’ve not seen that for meself, mind.”
Stephen said “Wow.” It seemed appropriate. “So how can you tell what you’re looking for is one of these wild pigs?”
“It’s not a wild pig,” the man corrected him. “It’s a pig run wild. Gone feral. There’s a difference, obviously.”
“Obviously.”
“I thought at first it were a dog, naturally, but then I thought on. It kept happening, see? Great holes in fences, doors and gates barged open, but nothing random. Whatever it was kept coming back to’t the same places because it knew it could find food theer, and only did enough damage to get what it wanted. A dog don’t do that. A dog that’s slipped the leash just goes daft, running about and barking. Thing is, a wild dog’s a pack animal. It has to be ‘cos a dog’s not got enough sense to cope on its own. A tame dog left to its own devices’ll starve.”
Stephen could see why a dog had been ruled out of the equation but not why that automatically meant a pig.
“Have you seen tracks or something?”
The man made that dry rustling sound that passed for laughter. “Now you’re talking, son.” Stephen savoured that word: son. The man stood, pivoted at the hips, and stretched out his arm. “Sithee.”
Stephen looked. Saw nothing. The man sucked his teeth. Took a few steps to his right. Looked straight down. “Na’ then.”
Now Stephen saw. The furrow the man was standing in was wider than its neighbours. Considerably wider. Moving over and looking down the line Stephen saw plants forced apart, stems broken, trampled. He pictured something broad and powerful barrelling down the furrow. He turned and followed the line to see where it was headed. The man nodded, sniffed. “Aye, lad. Your place. Oughterthwaite.”
I’ll be needing a word wi’ your father, lad.
You can’t. He’s ill!
Finn? I’m sorry to hear that.
It was only later, in the still silence of the night, that Stephen realised what the man had said. Back in the moment his sole thought had been to keep him away from the farm and especially his mother who would be furious and would blame it all on him like she always did. But then, going over it in the darkness: He knew dad’s name. How?
It was a riddle without a clue. He twisted and turned it in his imagination, always returning to the same conclusion. The man knew and there was no apparent reason why he should.
Stephen punched his pillows and kicked his feet out from under his duvet. He wondered what time it was. There were, of course, no clocks in the farmhouse. Time for the Websters neither flew nor passed;
instead it pooled and set. Stephen listened. No sound from the twins, down the far end of the upper storey. Richard always slept like a log and Amelia carried silence with her like a comfy jumper. Closer to, only the bathroom separating them, was his parent’s room. He cocked an ear, expecting nothing. Certainly nothing ... provocative.
So far as Stephen could tell, the night he was conceived was the last time his parents had sex. No telltale squeaks, grunts or bumps ever came from the bedroom beyond the bathroom. Stephen knew this because he often strained to stay awake rather than risk a dream. His theory - never aired – was that the twins had been adopted so that Olivia and Finn could build a family without having to touch one another.
Tonight he listened because he wanted something, anything, to divert his mind from the problem of the stranger he had naively allowed to come too close. And tonight, for the first time in years, he heard something. He heard his parents talking to one another – an actual conversation. He couldn’t make out the words no matter how he strained. But he heard his mother’s voice, softly undulating, not scolding or complaining – just talking like a normal person – and every now and then his father, whom he hadn’t seen for weeks, replying calmly, reassuringly. And that must have lulled Stephen to sleep.
He was sleeping,